Writing Tools

Before you can publish your family history, you need to write it. Here are several tools that can help you in your writing project.

Office Suites

Microsoft Office [Win & Mac] is probably the most popular – and most expensive – office suite currently available. The Home & Student edition for Windows includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote is available in the $115 range.

WordPerfect Office [Win] also offers a Home & Student edition in the $60 range. It includes WordPerfect, Quattro Pro, Presentations and Lightning, their digital notebook app.

Apple’s work suite of apps are included with each desktop or mobile device at no cost. The suite includes Pages, Numbers and Keynote.

OpenOffice.org [Win, Mac & Linux] is an open source suite that includes word processing, spreadsheet and presentation apps along with a database management platform. There is no cost to download the suite, but there are limited support resources available.

Research, Organization and Writing

Scrivener [Mac & Win] – supports your research, organization and writing efforts – all in one package. See my recent review for details. An iOS version was recently released.

Ulysses [Mac & iOS] – a writing platform similar to Scrivener. It supports Markdown to help “future-proof” your writing.